


"Go to the Mirror!"

by SekritOMG



Series: The Rectum is a Tomb [2]
Category: South Park
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1960s, Alternate Universe - British, Alternate Universe - Historical, M/M, Self-Indulgent, borscht, funemployment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-01
Updated: 2013-10-01
Packaged: 2017-12-28 02:36:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/986668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SekritOMG/pseuds/SekritOMG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>August 1967.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Go to the Mirror!"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nhaingen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nhaingen/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Rectum is a Tomb](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/28136) by SekritOMG. 



> Historical British AU. This is a prequel for a longer WIP of mine: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4843916/1/The-Rectum-is-a-Tomb
> 
> I feel ridiculous posting this but hey! maybe you wanted to read a gay 1960s South Park fanfic set in London?

The flat was tiny, it was ugly, it was overheated, and it was hardly bearable under conditions of sobriety. On top of that, it smelt worse, not putrid like old rubbish or sewage but old, the staleness of a century (perhaps two) lingering in the floorboards, in the drywall, in the rotting wood of the mantel and the window pane. It was hardly furnished, a single bed for both of them, and cobwebs everywhere. Kyle's mother had at first insisted that she would clean it, and then this turned into her determination to hire someone to clean it. Then, as with most things, her will to see the project through wilted, and soon the flat was merely dirty, and Kyle left wondering if his parents intended to let their eldest (perhaps only remaining) son live like this. Kyle had never had his own flat before, nor had he ever cleaned anything. He had never done his own wash or dried dishes. At Magdalen someone, little house elves, had come in and straightened his sheets and swept the floors as he studied during the day, elsewhere. At home he had come to ignore the housekeepers, an ongoing parade of attendants to whom he felt immune. Clearly he had taken them for granted. He was used to coming home to a clean room.

It was regrettable that Stanley did not seem similarly bothered by the state of the flat. Though Kyle had to admit that Stanley had greater concerns. They had not resumed their past intimacies, not as Kyle had assumed they must, if they were to share a flat, let alone a bed. Stanley didn't cook, he didn't clean, he didn't even have much to say, most days. Kyle tried to be sympathetic, but it was difficult. He was waiting for a phone call that kept him home all day; his father had promised him an interview somewhere, an advertising agency. With Stanley out Kyle felt glued to the phone. He had purchased a little notebook and set it beside the phone, with a biro. He felt apprehensive about going to the loo, even. He dared not ask Stanley to get him a book or a magazine. Kyle was considering subscribing to a journal, _Studies in Regency Literature_. Then it occurred to him that such a decision might lure him back into academia. Also, he had little money to waste on periodical subscriptions at the moment. He kept waiting by the phone. It was worse than waiting for a boy to call, since he was unable to even touch himself. What if he was rung mid-stroke? The idea was appalling. He would continue to sit in the dirty flat, in the armchair by the phone.

~

After all this time, Kyle's nose still ached. He thought about it incessantly. He was still shocked when he saw himself in the mirror. He began to wonder if perhaps this was a deterrent for Stanley. Kyle hated that he no longer looked like himself. He regretted that the rhinoplasty had been necessary. Mostly he regretted that he had forgiven Eric and determined not to dwell on it. For what else should he think about, alone in this flat all day, with no one to talk to? By the third week he was no longer interested in sitting by the phone.

So he moved to the kitchen, and tried to make dinner. This is what he would do for Stanley, if he could, though he was unsure it would help. They still hadn't made love or so much as kissed. Kyle found it annoying and depressing. It made him want to cry, and then he felt guilty for being selfish. He called his mother and asked her for something.

“What is it, Kyle?” she sounded tired. “I'll do it if I can.”

“I want a cookbook,” he said. “If it's not too much trouble, please.”

“I don't use a cookbook,” she said, in an authoritative way, “but I can write down some recipes on cards for you. What do you want to make?”

“Well, to be entirely forthright I'm unsure.”

“Do you want to call me back?”

“No!” Kyle hated the thought of going through it again with her secretary and all. “No, Mom, just — what about dumplings or — or something nice for summer. It's sweltering in here.”

“You could make borscht,” she suggested. “Kyle, this really isn't a good time—”

“All right,” he agreed. “Please, Mom, I would love your recipe for borscht.”

Kyle had never liked borscht himself. Luckily, the recipe arrived by courier bundled with a few other cards. Included was a hand-written note from his mother:

_Bubbelah—_

_Please let me know if you need help with the borscht. My mother's was better than mine and I always wondered if she hadn't kept an ingredient from me. I want to hear how it turns out!_

_—Mom_

Kyle stared at the card, and shuffled through the selection she had sent: green beans with sliced almonds, mashed potatoes without dairy, leg of lamb, flourless chocolate bundt cake. It called for vegetable shortening and cooking oil. Kyle sighed and went to the store.

Down the King's Road, Kyle paused to admire the schoolgirls who traipsed down the pavement, high on the boiling August sun and possibly something psychotropic. From every shop and storefront and window were the same ubiquitous songs, “I'm a Believer” and “All You Need Is Love” and “If I Were a Rich Man,” a longer and more annoying version that haunted Kyle through the grocery store as he compared cans of beets. It was almost fitting. He had barely any money but having to endure the worst musical he'd ever heard in his life made him want to splurge on alcohol. He went from the checkout to an off-license around the corner and bought a bottle of sherry. It would offset the burden of stewing the beets in an airless, stinking flat where sweat dripped down Kyle's nose if he didn't wipe it from his brow. He was staining all of his best shirts.

~

As Kyle was unlocking the front door he heard the phone begin to ring. Panicked, he nearly fell across the threshold. Barely checking to see if he'd managed to spare his sherry from shattering, he grasped over the armchair and for the phone.

“Hello?” he gasped, disappointed in himself for sounding as shaken as he was.

“Bubbelah.” It was his mother. “You sound awful.”

“I was — I went to the market.”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, good, I was just calling—”

“I haven't made it yet,” he said. He was still catching his breath. “The soup, I mean.”

“Oh. Well! I was just calling to see if the courier got to you, you know, with the recipes.”

“I have them, yes, thank you.” Kyle's voice cracked at the end of 'thank you' and he had to cut himself off, lest he begin crying.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “I have a meeting, but—”

“I'm fine,” Kyle insisted, taking heavy breaths to keep himself from crying. “Thank you for sending me your recipes — for writing them out.”

“Sweetheart, of course. If you need anything, please just say so. I mean it, Kyle, just ask for help if you need it.”

“I need no help, Mom, I'm fine.”

“I figured you could make a whole meal,” she said.

“Well, all right.”

“Stanley might like some of those things.”

Kyle did not mention that Stanley did not seem to enjoy Sheila Broflovski's cooking. “He may,” Kyle agreed. “Yes, thanks.”

“I'm late for a meeting. But, bubbe, if you need anything—”

“I'll ask,” Kyle promised. “Yes, thanks. I appreciate it, Mom, I do.”

Kyle picked up his groceries and bolted the door behind him, tears of frustration pricking his eyes. By the time he had poured himself a glass of wine he was bawling. Over the stove, where he intended to stew the beets in a cast-iron skillet, hung an exhaust hood. The surface was not mirrored but reflected enough that Kyle could see his unfamiliar visage staring back, eyes a reddish blur. It was the nose that bothered him, this straight and relatively pleasant shape that a surgeon had molded. If Kyle hadn't been alone he might have felt better. Where was Eric? At home with his mother, surely, eating an Austrian cremeschnitte and watching daytime telly, feeling no remorse about the nose.

It was pathetic, wasn't it, to stand here mid-afternoon just off the phone with one's mother, utterly sobbing, beets pooled in a cast-iron skillet and tears mingling with sweat at the tip of one's nose, wishing one had company, even if it was a bloke who five months ago had thrown Kyle into a doorframe? Kyle grabbed the bottle of sherry off the counter and slid onto the floor. Only then did he realize the floor was filthy, it was literally covered in dust and some soot, probably from the fireplace. Now he had dust and soot all over the seat of his trousers. They were lavender gabardine, a pricey splurge Kyle had invested in a month ago, too stiff for summer but the color was delicious. They took days to air-dry in this stuffy apartment and Kyle wasn't sure he had the money to get them pressed. He drank sherry right out of the bottle. At this point if he passed out and Stanley found him in dirty trousers vomiting onto the kitchen floor, well, that was Stanley's problem. It was cruel but there it was.

Then the phone began to ring again. Wanting to speak to no one, Kyle sluggishly pushed himself to his feet, leaving the bottle on the floor and shuffling to the phone. Before Kyle had answered he must have been aware that it could not have been in relation to work, for no serious and respectable professional would let the phone ring nine, 10, 11 times. “Hello?” Kyle said, wetly, into the receiver.

It was Butters Stotch. Kyle did not want to speak to him, but some relief washed away his last surge of self-pity long enough to say, “Hello, sweetheart, how are you?”

“I'm wonderful!” Butters cried. He always was. Kyle never doubted it. “I've done it, I've got a gig!”

“Oh.” Kyle didn't much care about that, though he immediately resented Butters for flaunting his success. “Congratulations, then, and where is it?” Kyle fell into the chair and tucked the receiver under his chin, uncapping the biro.

“At a cabaret called Smoke Screens. Do you get it? I find it very clever.”

“Yes, yes, I do get it — very clever. How wonderful.”

“I'll be performing Tuesday night, the fifth of September. Will you come?”

“I wouldn't miss it.”

“Will you bring Stanley?”

“He—” Kyle's voice hitched. “I can't make him go anywhere.”

“Oh, but he must come — Eric's coming and we'll all be reunited!”

“It's been all of two months,” said Kyle, the thought of seeing Eric at a cabaret called 'Smoke Screens' of all places making him feel ill. “Since we were last all together, I mean.”

“Too long!” said Butters. That was the problem with Butters; he was always so benevolent and likewise sincere. “I'm so excited! Brad is so pleased. We're so happy, I never thought I could be this happy.”

“Well, it's just — the whole time I've known you, you've always been happy.”

“I surely wasn't always this happy. Until uni I subsisted primarily on hope.”

“I'm afraid mine's running out.” Kyle sniffed. “And what's more, I've left my drink in the other room.”

“I can wait if you want to go get it.”

“No, that's quite all right, I should really leave at least some of it for Stanley. He might want a drink when he gets home, to accompany the soup I'm making.”

“I didn't know you cooked dinner!” 

“This is my first try,” said Kyle. “I'm panicked. I called my mother for advice and she sent over recipes for me, hand-written ones on cards. As if I have a recipe box. I haven't even got an apron. And they're all for different meal components, the recipes. One for a veg, one for a pudding. Et cetera.”

“That sounds nice,” said Butters. “Brad only knows how to make one pudding and we've been eating it all week. Orange jelly with a kind of whipped treacle sort of — thing. It's minty, too, I can't make sense of it. I can't eat much more of that.”

“It's just so grim, to think I haven't got a job and they haven't called to set anything up, such an inversion of how it's meant to be under the natural order of things, since a normal person would go out and find a wife to cook him dinner, but here I am—”

“Oh, Kyle,” said Butters, kindly. “Don't.”

“What if it works? That's all I keep thinking to myself, what if they fix him and I'm left here in this dirty old flat alone with my borscht?”

“You poor thing, Kyle. What is borscht?”

“Oh, it's this — really stupid soup. It's made of beets.”

“Is that good?” Butters asked.

“No,” Kyle cried. “I can't cook a thing, and it's disgusting as it is. Stanley will hate it and I can't even do one nice thing for him, I'm useless, completely useless and there's nothing I can give him, I can't give him anything, he doesn't even want sex from me!” Kyle was crying into the phone. “I'm a failure at everything. I should have stayed at Oxford, I should have done a fourth year. Do you think it's too late? To do a fourth year? What if I went up there and met with Garrison, would he take me back?”

“I'm sure he would but you needn't resort to that! I'm so sorry, I didn't realize — we should get together. Come over for tea tomorrow. I'm so sorry. I'm — I wish I could do something. We'll think of something!”

“I can't think of anything,” said Kyle, wiping snot from his nose and onto his gabardines. They were dirty already anyhow. “I have to go, Butters, stop tying up the line. I'm waiting for a call. It's important.”

“Okay,” said Butters. “I mean it, I'd like to help! You poor thing. Consider coming over tomorrow.”

“Good-bye, Miss B,” said Kyle, and he hung up the phone.

~

Upon Stanley's return it was late afternoon, the sun low enough in the sky that it was dark in the flat and necessary to turn the lights on. Though Kyle wished to be at the door to greet Stanley, he decided instead to run to the kitchen and light the tapers he had set on the table. He had laid it with a white linen tablecloth and their mismatched flatware, the chipped china they'd found in a junk shop and the jam jars Stanley exclusively used for drinking. Kyle had changed into a tight pair of unusual white denims, and he stood with his rear against the table, trembling, worried about the thickness of the soup in the refrigerator. It had the consistency of bad porridge. Stanley was not going to like it.

When Stanley came into the kitchen Kyle straightened to attention, saying, “Hi,” trying to sound soothing. He took a step forward, and then paused. “I, well — I made dinner.”

It was the first time he had ever made dinner, or cooked any food on his own, for himself and another man, in his own kitchen in their own flat.

“Hi,” Stanley said in reply, and he seemed afraid to come any closer. “You made dinner?”

“I made dinner. Yes. I made — well, I made this — you'll hate it, it's this horrific soup recipe my mother sent over, for borscht, this beet soup. It's very Jewish!”

“Oh. Is it?” Poor Stanley. Kyle wanted to wrap him up and smother him in affection.

“Yes, well — sit down.”

“Sure.”

Kyle poured two glasses of sherry and went to fetch the soup. He had no ladle and resolved to simply pour it into the soup bowls, directly from the pot. It made an unnerving plopping noise, and it smelled suspect, but Kyle had made it, and he felt proud. “This isn't going to be very good,” he said.

“You don't have to cook for me,” said Stanley. “I can get — a sandwich, or something. I have some money.”

“I hate the thought of you spending that money.” Kyle took his seat and realized he hadn't put napkins on the table. They had no napkins at all, yet he felt silly for having omitted them anyhow.

“That money is paying for this flat right now,” said Stanley, and he lifted his spoon and waved it around. “This flat you seem so happy in.”

“I'm trying to make it happy. I think a bit of gaiety is all we need in here. This flat, I mean. That is, if you're willing.”

“Why wouldn't I be?”

“Well.” Kyle could only stare into his bowl of soup. Now that he was sitting directly over it, he liked the color well enough. It reminded him of dried blood. “Is the treatment, well — is it working?”

Scowling, Stanley said, “No.” He took a spoonful of the soup in hand and swallowed it. To Kyle's amazement, Stanley didn't choke it down. He closed his eyes and seemed to consider what he was eating. After a moment, he opened his eyes and said, “Thank you for making dinner.”

“I'll make dinner every night,” Kyle promised.

“You needn't do that.” Stanley looked away. “I'm sorry I'm no fun anymore,” he said. “I talk all day and it's horrible.”

“I understand.” Kyle reached for his glass of sherry. “Please believe me when I say I understand.”

“I don't think you would,” said Stanley. “God, it's just, pornography.”

“Pornography.”

“Yes, all day long, pornography. Or that's what it was today. Describe this picture. What about it is arousing? Or not arousing? And the sad fact is, none of it is arousing. How could it possibly be in that awful office? With other queers staring at you?”

“I don't know,” said Kyle. “I — honey, I cannot imagine.”

“I have nothing else to say about it,” said Stanley, and the conversation was over. He resumed eating his soup.

~

In bed that night, Kyle said, “I am worried.” He was wearing nothing, not even pants, as it was too hot for anything against his skin. Despite that, he wished Stanley would hold him. There was a gulf of empty space between them, for all it was only a few inches. Those inches between them felt like a gash down Kyle's middle. He wanted to tie the space together the way Stanley had sewn him up once, after Eric had split Kyle's lip. It would be easy with a needle and thread, painful but straightforward. “I am worried,” he repeated, staring at the gulf between their thighs.

Stanley was reading the paper, from which he had offered Kyle a section, which Kyle had declined. “What's the matter, darling?” he asked. “What's worrying you? Surely not the job thing?”

“Not the job thing,” Kyle lied, though it was a half-truth; the job thing wasn't on his mind at the moment, directly. “I worry that it's working.”

“What is? The treatment?”

“Well, yes.”

Stanley put the paper aside. “Why would you think that?”

Kyle was staring down at his feet at the end of the bed. “You won't touch me,” he said. It came out softly, as if saying it made it more real and he had to tamp it down. “So I wonder if it's working.”

“It's not working.”

“I'd rather that,” said Kyle, “than it _not_ working, and you failed to muster interest or will because you were devoting yourself to ... someone else.”

“Someone else? Jesus, who could that be? Darling, I don't even know anyone.”

“You know Token.”

Stanley’s voice was tense. “I'm not even _speaking_ to Token, really.”

“And Wendy.”

“Or her, really.”

“Well, why not?”

“Darling—”

“Stop calling me your darling,” said Kyle, “if you don't mean it.”

The look Stanley produced at that moment was so forlorn, it made Kyle hate himself for doubting Stanley's loyalty. “I mean it,” Stanley said, and his words were so soft. Kyle would have liked to touch them, they felt so real. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm simply becoming withdrawn.”

“Then that rubbish is changing you,” said Kyle, “if not for the _straighter_ than in some small way. You were never withdrawn.”

“I was never exactly boisterous.”

“Do you think it would work on me?”

“Kyle, no.”

“Because I don't want to be like this either, anymore. I don't want to sit here feeling like things have to come to me, waiting for the phone to ring all day. I want to be the one to call for once.”

“Well, no therapy of any kind is going to change your disposition like that.”

“It's just that I see so much loneliness when I look ahead at the rest of my life.”

“But it's important to remember that even straights feel lonely. I sit there all day long and they tell me to find a girl, for fulfillment. Yet loneliness is a mortal condition. It's little relevant to sexual desire.”

“If you want to wax rhapsodically about sexual desire, I believe I have a reefer in my trunk.”

“Where'd you get that?” Stanley asked.

“I suspect it's left from some graduation fete. By the way, I didn't mention — Butters has a show, finally. At some place called Smoke Screens. On the fifth. Of September.”

“Am I invited?”

“I'd love to be your plus-one.”

“Then I shall escort you,” said Stanley, and with finality he tossed the paper to the floor. “Good for her.” Stanley was yawning.

“Does it tire you out?”

Stanley shot Kyle a queer look, as if the question were absurd. “It’s emotionally exhausting, I suppose.”

“I suspect you don’t want to talk about it.”

Merely shrugging, Stanley turned off the lamp, a short ceramic floret that sat on the floor and shined through its shade straight up to paint an oval of pure yellow light on the ceiling.

Kyle listened for the commencement of Stanley’s snoring. Stanley did not know he snored and Kyle hesitated to bring it up. There was no cure for it, not to Kyle’s knowledge, though of course he was not a physician and was not in the position to speak with certainty on the matter. It was soft snoring, like the nervous touch of being fingered for the first time; it was that kind of tentative rhythm, or perhaps Kyle wanted Stanley to fuck him so badly that he was now linking absurd things to sex. In any case Kyle desired to keep this information to himself, as if it was a tiny little secret of his own that might cause enormous harm in someone else’s knowledge.

On top of that Kyle was only just coming to realize, together in this bed over the past month, that Stanley was simply never going to be dominant and was never going to reach over. Kyle must have mistaken Stanley’s perversity for emergent butchness. If Stanley were more like that then others might want him, which was natural and to be expected. Now that the bleach had come out of Stanley’s hair and he was out of those awful undergraduate robes, Kyle had come to the understanding that the object of his misplaced fascination was, in fact, conventionally attractive. Kyle was naïve enough that distinctions such as _best mates_ mattered to him, though now he was hard and thinking again about Stanley reaching over and the reasons for which it was unlikely or impossible. Kyle was desperate to touch himself, but there was a limit to Stanley’s indulgence for bad taste. Which served as a reminder—

“Doesn’t it bother you,” Kyle spoke, into the darkness, “that our flat is filthy?”

Stanley took a drowsy moment to ask, “Is it really?”

“If you’re unsure you mustn’t be paying attention. It’s horrid. There’s a scent — well, no, a scent is pleasant. There is a _smell_ , dear. The smell of age. It’s painfully obvious to me.”

“We could clean,” Stanley offered. He was very awake now, sitting up. They were the same height, or close enough, but from this angle he towered over Kyle, his outline imposing in the darkness. The implicit threat of this posture made Kyle’s cock leap, seemingly.

“I’m too lazy to do all that.”

“All that what, cleaning? How difficult could it be, between the two of us? Besides, if it’s anyone’s fault the flat is dirty, it’s your fault. You’re home all day. You cooked tonight. And I am not the one douching in the shower.”

“How dare you! Do you think I do that for pleasure?”

“Of course you do,” Stanley replied, not without some clear embarrassment in his tone.

“I do it because it’s the right thing to do,” said Kyle, though he was well aware that he derived pleasure from it.

“Who are you sleeping with?”

“Me? No one!”

“Then why bother?”

“I have some dignity,” said Kyle. Now he sat up, too. “If I were sleeping with anyone what business would it be of yours? Unless I were sleeping with _you_. And what would the point of it be? I’m sure you couldn’t have me.”

“Nonsense, I have done.”

“I don’t believe you! I don’t know what you discuss all day besides discuss _pornography_ but I naturally fear it’s working. One day you shall leave in the mid-morning and reach a breakthrough and never come home. And then I’ll have to clean this flat myself!”

“Well, far be it for me to leave you alone on _that_ account,” said Stanley. “Darling, it’s inane pseudoscience. Inversion is an incurable disease. There’s no amount of will to banish it. I know you understand _that_ , at least.”

“I need you to prove it to me, then.” Kyle laced his fingers in his lap. He stuck out his lip and lowered his eyes.

“Oh, you’re transparent,” said Stanley, yet he grasped Kyle by the shoulder and leaned in, kissing first that pouting lip and then, when Kyle opened widely, fully sucking at it.

It was exciting to be kissed and even touched, though the summer air in the flat had made Stanley’s hands clammy.

“Do you want it?” Stanley asked. “Because I’d love to prove you wrong.”

“I’m not telling!” Kyle of course dared not reach out for a feel himself.

“This isn’t really the time to be coy.” Stanley reached out anyway, grasping Kyle’s cock through the sheet. “Do you want me to suck you?”

It irritated Kyle that he insisted on asking. This was the point at which he broke, crying, “I want to be fucked,” and it would have felt cathartic if Stanley weren’t so indulgent, reluctant to tease.

Kyle knew he was ready, perhaps turned-on by the instantaneity of the moment. His sex experience was a mosaic of hard fucking, of being pulled aside and told. Eric had always decided when and where and for how long (though in fairness Eric was chronically unable to last to Kyle’s likeness, even as Kyle did not consider what he liked to be a viable factor in the relationship until too late). Stanley was the only one with whom it was typically mutual. Yet the sad thing, to Kyle, was that this distinction meant that by necessity the sex would never be as hard, as forceful, and brutal as he wanted it. Stanley was so desperate to be accommodating that he used cooking oil and opened Kyle slowly, fingering at that snoring pace. This was why it couldn’t work between them, really, Kyle figured. It was always going to be like this between two queens.

It was best for Kyle when a man pushed him so hard into the mattress (or floorboards; wet lawn; brick wall) that he came simply from friction on his cock. Eric had always pinched his chest and dug those rower’s fingers into Kyle’s neck. Stanley instead stroked Kyle with both hands, leaving Kyle to do his own dirty work. He grasped at his nipples, pulling them taut and twisting, wishing Stanley would do _this_ for him, at least. Yet the moment when Stanley came he said, “I love you,” which was just a stupid thing to say during sex because both of them knew this was just a dumb thing they were pretending at. Kyle himself came on Stanley’s dick as he took a gander down at his own in Stanley’s grasp. He wished he could see, at some point, a head-on visual of a cock driving into him. Maybe an elaborate system of mirrors. Perhaps if he ever got his job he could afford to commission such a thing.

Returning afterward with a warm cloth, Stanley wiped the oily remainder of sex from the ring of Kyle’s entrance and said, with pleasure in his voice, “So there.”

“So there what?” Kyle asked. Having come he now felt slow and drowsy.

“So there it isn’t working.”

“I _suppose_ ,” said Kyle. He was torn between wanting to sob again and wanting to fall asleep. “Though this doesn’t prove much since fucking me is basically fucking a woman. It’s a shame I cut my hair off or you might have pretended. Or were you pretending anyway? I’m so tired.”

“I don’t pretend with you,” said Stanley. He tossed the damp cloth on the floor (so much for his innocence in regard to the problem of cleanliness) and put an arm across Kyle’s chest.

For a moment Kyle seized. He was too spent to grow hard, though he always reacted _somehow_ to a protective gesture. “Do you pretend with others?”

“Oh, darling.” Stanley sighed, and kissed Kyle’s naked shoulder.

Kyle counted the seconds until the heard the first evidence of snoring.

~

Waking early around 10, Kyle found the flat hot already and the bed next to him empty. A moment of panic: Perhaps Stanley had gone forever; perhaps this was it. Rationally Kyle knew there was no reason to suspect this, yet the thought lingered in his brain and he roused himself and searched the wardrobe, relief coming only when he found Stanley’s clothes and shoes, one pair of trainers and one for nice dress. He must have worn the other pair of trainers out. Wiping the sweat from his brow, Kyle stood and closed the wardrobe, squinting in the dim of this room, at their mattress on the floor.

At the sink, glowering into the mirror, Kyle fixated on his nose. He had lived an entire life, over 20 years, with a fat, bowed bridge, an exact duplicate of his mother’s. It balanced out his lips, gave meaning to the breadth of his face by cleaving it in two, symmetrically. He had asked for this, and that was what made it worst, this angle that sloped gently downward, normative-looking and without character. The surgeon had told him it would be crooked thanks to Eric’s damage, and Kyle had said, “Straighten it out then, please.” He pressed it flat, trying to fatten it against his face. He released it and the nose regained its shape. If Stanley came home — well, _when_ Stanley came home — Kyle would say something about it. He would ask, “Do you dislike that I’ve changed my nose?”

Carefully, Kyle brushed his teeth and plucked his eyebrows, applied clear varnish to his nails, scrubbed his face with harsh soap and soothed it with cold cream. He sat on the seat of the toilet and washed his feet in cold water, then drained the tub and rubbed them with a pumice stone. He rinsed his feet again and dried them with a towel, rubbed the cold cream away with another towel and pinched his cheeks until they glowed. He dabbed rose water behind his ears and stared at himself in the mirror again. Needing to prolong this ritual, he took a scissors from his trunk and snipped evenly as possible at the ends of his hair. Until this past year he had worn it long, or rather, _large_ , its natural volume lending itself to easy height, a style for which he knew no term. Yet he saw news reports sometimes on the young people — people his age, hard to believe — gathering over the summer in San Francisco, wearing hair like his. He hated to think anything he did was too regular, and so he tried to keep it shorn now, though the necessity of today’s trim was debatable if not non-existent. He was seeking an adult job and besides, unlike those San Francisco kids he was not a high school drop-out. He was a university graduate now and he would act like one of those, an adult. What was more, without his large nose his large hair was irrelevant. The blush began to fade from his cheeks and he pinched them again, trying to break capillaries.

On the kitchen counter, in Kyle’s notebook, was scribbled:

_Hello darling,_ _I’ve gone out for a walk. I have to be in_ _Sidmouth St at noon.                     -SM_

At first Kyle was annoyed that his book (and the biro) had been moved from near the phone, where he’d left it. He hadn’t cleaned up dinner, though the dishes were in the sink, and Kyle supposed he had better wash them. Stanley’s mother had sent them a box of things, “living wares” according to the note she had appended. In that jumble had been a bottle of Fairy Liquid. Kyle felt he should get it out of the cupboard and attempt to wash the dishes. It had been a month of eating small bits of food, drugstore plastic-wrapped sandwiches, over the kitchen sink. There was leftover borscht and Kyle considered that he might like it for breakfast. It was not breakfast food, quite unlike the kippers on toast and runny soft-boiled eggs in cups he had been served in the Magdalen hall. Yet Kyle was hungry and he had made soup, and since it was still in the refrigerator, he was determined to eat it.

And then the phone rang, and Kyle rushed for it, nabbing instinctually the pen and the notebook.

“Hello,” Kyle panted into the phone. He felt breathless, as if he had travelled a great distance to get here, though he had come from the next room over.

“Is this Mr. Broflovski?” a female voice asked.

“Yes,” said Kyle. He knelt on the seat of the armchair. “This is he.”

“I’m calling on behalf of CBBO,” she said. “Would you mind holding for a moment while I transfer you?”

“Of course I wouldn’t mind,” said Kyle. “Please.”

“One moment, then,” she said, and Kyle heard the distant click of the call being transferred.


End file.
